Intended and Emergent Academic Knowledge Transfer: A Review of Reviews

Knowledge transfer has become an almost universal expectation directed at universities and research institutes alike. It is not an end in itself, policies trying to foster transfer activities aim for responses to societal challenges or contributions to innovation. For universities, this expectation comes on top of their traditional missions: research and teaching. While a focus on the intended transfer activities of academic actors is highly compatible with a governance perspective, it tends to turn a blind eye on actual processes of knowledge transfer that are more complex and emergent. Innovation processes, for example, typically involve not only intended but also unintended elements that might be connected to the traditional missions of universities. Intermediary actors, for instance, translate “basic research” publications for their target groups. Graduates from university enter the labor market and sometimes transform their field of practice by the cognitive categories they acquired at university. The proposed paper will review a total number of 44 reviews on knowledge transfer, analyzing to which extent such less obvious processes of knowledge transfer have been reflected and evaluated.